Thursday, April 15, 2010

Thursday, April 15, 2010

Every now and then, we get comments from readers that go something like this:

"You know that cake you posted today? It wasn't that bad! Sure it was misspelled, and the icing looked like someone had spread it on with their tongue, and there was that feces border and thumb print - oh, and the dead bug was kinda gross. But did you see that rose?! Gorgeous!"

Yeeeeah.

Well today, in honor of our friend Neil over at 1000 Awesome Things and the rest of you positive Pollyannas, we picked out a few Wrecks from our arsenal - and we're going to find something awesome to say abouteach and every one of them. Even if it kills us. Which, let's be honest, is entirely possible.

Ready?

*pulling up happy pants*

Here we GOOOO!

Hey, it looks just like corn! And corn's a great source of fiber! Cleans you right out! And clean colons are awesome!

Look how artfully arranged the tablecloth is! The folds are so even! So regular! Being regular is also awesome.

Uh...

Noisemakers!

I love noisemakers.

Not that you'd want to put these in your mouth, of course, considering where they've been...but, uh...yeah. Noisemakers areawesome.

Gee, that looks like a really sharp knife! It probably cut right through that hideous scarecrow thing, no sweat! In fact, I bet whoever cuts cheese with that knife doesn't have to strain at all.

Not straining while cutting the cheese? You guessed it: AWESOME.

Alright, now we're on the home stretch! [rubbing hands together] Bring on the final contender!

Oh, crap.

I mean, uh, oooo. Tough one.

Sure, there's a full load of things I could say here, but not many would be what you'd call "awesome." Hmm.

[thinking]

[thinking]

[despairing]

[back to thinking]

Ok, I think I got it:

You tell me.

That's right, tell me what's awesome about this Wreck in the comments. Why? Well, mostly for the glory. But also because you just might win Neil's book:

I've already read it, and believe me, it lives up to its name. And speaking of names, mine's on the back cover. So that's worth the purchase price right there. (Did I mention it's alsohalf off on Amazon right now? Yeah. That helps.)

Now go forth, and comment! Whoever makes me laugh the hardest wins the glory, while two randomly selected commenters will actually win a personalized and signed copy of The Book of Awesome. I'll even have Neil do the personalizing and signing. [waggling eyebrows]

Oh, and Neil is willing to ship anywhere in the world. So Estonia, I'm looking at you.

[John's rule type stuff]When you comment, be sure to put your name. If your name is something boring like John, be sure to follow it up with something creative like (the hubby of Jen). Or, ya know, your last name. And remember, we're picking two winners at random so if you happen to be painfully unfunny like me, you can still win. Winners will be announced at 2pm (Eastern) on Friday. Finally, if you don't win, you should still buy the book. We could all stand to focus a little more on the awesome in life. Good luck and Wreck On!

UPDATE: We have our winners! (See the top of this post.) Thanks, everyone; your comments have been the best free entertainment I've had all week. ;)

What I really admire about this cake is that, tempted though the baker may have been to just stop, put her feet up, and, er, take a load off after dumping icing over the top, they instead actually took the time to smooth it out in places and arranged it with lighting to give it a special "glistening" effect. A for effort.

Today I sit at my computer trying to be happy but I have dragon scales (Shingles). I have replaced every crumby thought with a sweet thought. Seeing the noise makers made me realize how successful I have been (Oh pooh). Thanks for your website. I need it today. Lorrie the porcupine

The marble slab is so nice and square. And the base of the cake is so nice and round. Shapes are always awesome. And, um, the upper portion of the cake is so nice and... lumpy... Lumpy is always... is... damn, I give up.

Well let's see... it looks like a collapsed beehive that someone just PLOPPED on there, and bees ARE awesome, in their own way. Kinda. And marble is awesome. And... oh, poo - that's all I can come up with.

I should have worn Depends today because my awesome clean colon is spasming with laughter. LMFAO!! Too freakin' funny> I am amazed that people will actually be proud? of those "creations". Someone needs a slap...a positive one..LOL

The last cake, and I use the term "cake" loosely, looks like the Sorting Hat from Harry Potter. And Harry Potter is awesome. In all seriousness, is there really anything better than ganache? No, I didn't think so. - Lori Lee

I love how there's a little hole at the bottom of the beehive for the bees to get in and out of. That's very important in the honey making process. How awesome of the decorator to pay such close attention to detail. JILL READING

The baker left a hole in the icing so we could see the cake is chocolate, and made the icing SHINY so the light could gracefully bounce off of it, blinding us to the lack of symmetry in the whole thing. Then the baker artfully mounted the cake on a beautiful marble slab with accents that draw our eyes away from the cake. Wow!

The display case arrangers (because it is too well done for it to have been the wreckerator) were smart enough to put a cheesecake in the front of the display that is almost pretty enough to distract from the poo pile!

Ahhhh The Flow! Don't we all want some nice smooth shiny flow in the morning - There is really nothing more you can ask for!(and what if you have a really common first name - like Cindy, but your last name is out of control crazy like Anderson?)

I like how the cake decorator wasn't deterred from attempting to make this look like a cupcake. Just because you have a flat 9 inch wide by 1.5 inch tall cake is no reason not to go ahead and add 7 inches of icing on top.

I can hear it now, "What? Why won't this icing pour out and settle like it does on a cupcake? Oh well, we're going for height not perfection."

Just look at the almost-perfectly sized mouse hole. How awesome is a cake with a mouse living under it? And what is even more awesome? That mouse has marble floors. How many of us can say we have marble floors? A mouse living in a cake and having marble floors is awesome.

Unlike inferior materials such as cardboard cake bases, cheap plastic platters, or even cheap, aluminum, ready-to-rust pizza pans, this cake is laid on a foundation of marble. Solid rock my friends. Why, they call this the "Peter" cake. Peter was well known as being "the rock", though what you may not know is he was also famed for his shiny posterior (due to all the wiping! Sanitation!.... of course!)

And in his honor, we hereby use marble - strait from the quarries of South Korea - for our cake platters. Because nothing says "cleanup is easy!" - I mean "we're serious about our cakes" - quite like marble. And marble is AWESOME!

What a GLOSSY chocolate cake! They really got some height with that frosting, and just LOOK at how straight the sides of the bottom cake are! And the artful presentation on such elegant marble...I'm sure this is an exceptionally aromatic dessert piled high with antioxidant, mouth-watering goodness that is hard to resist!

well, it looks like there *might* be a ..."normal".. cake down there in the bottom left corner? so really, that is awesome - the baker decided a photo of poo cake was more important than of a "normal" cake.

Lately, I have been looking at birthday cake ideas online with my almost 5 year old, trying to choose what we should make for his birthday that's coming up in a few weeks. He just happened to walk up when I was reading this post and, after seeing the cakes pictured, said rather nervously, "I don't want any of those." Then, more firmly as he walked away, "I don't want any of those!"

The fact that my son thought that I was looking at those cakes for consideration makes me laugh. Poor kid will probably be worried until his birthday.

I feel the need to point out that the "scarecrow" thing is not a cake. It's a Danish pastry. My in-laws got one that looks eerily similar for my daughter's first birthday, though it says "1 år" instead of "5 år."

I'm not defending it. Just clarifying. :P Maybe Danes think it looks good, but I'm still American, even if my husband isn't.

I'm painfully unfunny (thanks for the reminder John-the-hubby-of-Jen) but I dod have to say that I'd love a marble cutting board like the one that last glorious cake is sitting on. And that's as positive as I get, folks!

What is awesome about this cake is it's zen...it reminds us that when we try to fill up our lives with meaningless debris, we feel heavy and weighted down (bloated and gassy even, by our material desires). It is only by sitting quietly and meditating on nothing (occassionaly aided by an out-of-date car magazine) that we can unload this extra baggage. Then, purged of our heavy load, we can feel that the empty void we now feel within is not to be rejected but to be accepted as is brings us closer to our spiritual one-ness with the nothingness of the universe. ohm.....

It's a shiny cake made of chocolate.... I hope. And the marble cutting board is very pretty. The bottom layer looks like it is nice and round. And... yeah. That's all I've got. Thanks for the laugh! Jen Range

It's so, um... SHINY! Yeah.. Perfect for distracting you from the large, lumpish form on top and asking too many questions. Being distracted from learning something potentially stomach-turning? AWESOME!

It is so awesome that there is a cake out there which I can SAFELY leave on the counter, and not worry about my four year old twins getting into. Life is good! Oh, and it's chocolate, as pointed out by others. Chocolate is good regardless of how swirly and ... well, anyhow...

The skill it takes to attempt such a wonderful representation of the rocky mountians out of icing - particularly with that thin sheen of ice over them - Obviously a refrence to global warming... All the glaciers after all *are* melting away. This cake was obviously meant to be a Cautionary Tale...If you dont pay attention to the gasses you are leaking....

Ooh, look! There's a mirror on the wall behind it, so you can see part of the cake's backside! And the whole creatively lumpy "cake" also brings to mind a backside. And without a backside, I would never be able to sit down to read Cake Wrecks. And Cake Wrecks is AWESOME!

Hmm, I'm going with the stove top it's sitting on looks shiny and clean, and for me that tends to be the last thing that gets cleaned in my kitchen. So it says a clean kitchen, and a clean kitchen is AWESOME!

There's really not a lot to go on, even the marble has something red smeared along the front of it.

The photographer did an awesome job of taking the picture! If you look in the background there was a reflection of the cake. So, they blessed us by cutting the reflection out of the pic. Because looking at that dinosaur BM would NOT be awesome twice, especially all at once!!

The sculpter of our final piece is an absolute genius. Truly, how could any compare? The smooth swirl of the top, signifying the spunky, childlike play of the creator, balanced just so on the more stable, conformist cylinder of the bottom. It positively sings to the conflict that lies within every person, that of whether to become normal and steady, or to release the wild interior. The gleam of the finish is like a reflection of the soul, revealing to us what only—

3) The frosting(?) is the exact color of my husbands eyes. Which makes me think of him. Which is great, because I love him and think he's awesome. And the cake prompting me to think of awesome things makes it awesome by association, right?

Well, there are two pretty awesome things about that last. First is the beautiful marble board it is sitting on. I'd love to have one of those, but I'm guessing it's pretty heavy, and I wouldn't want to carry it up three flights of stairs.

The second awesome thing about that cake is the little hole down at the base; it's the same shape as a cave my sister and I used to play in when we were small. So, yeah, pretty awesome!

Just look how perfectly the yummy, YUMMY chocolate reflects the light! You can take this into a deep, dark cave with you and it'll reflect the tiniest spark of light for miles so you won't get lost or eaten by the big scary dinosaur! GIVE ME 2!!

This is an amazing cake. It speaks deeply to the human soul. It's understandable that people just aren't going to get it.

It tells the tale of Pedro the cake maker. In his homeland Pedro was only allowed to make 1 kind of cake (vanilla with a basic white buttercream frosting.)

Pedro longed for the day when he could express himself through his cakes. No longer able to tolerate the boring white cakes he was forced to make day in and day out. Pedro rebelled and began creating cakes in a fury of creativity, Red Velvet, Carrot, even the forbidden CHOCOLATE! Pedro was jailed for his crimes of creativity.

Although imprisoned Pedro used what materials he had on hand to continue to make forbidden cakes. As he was awaiting his execution Pedro made this cake in the pitch black confines of his deathrow holding cell.

After his execution had been carried out the Overlord of the country saw this cake in the cell. So touched at the spirit of Pedro and his passion for cakes, the Overlord shed a single tear and declared that all cake makers would be allowed to make whatever cakes they wish.

This cake was preserved so that all might remember the sacrifice of Pedro and his incredible passion.

Okay, by the time I type this in, someone else may have pointed it out already, but there's a small HTML error in the link to Amazon. Looks like it should be easy to fix, but I thought you'd want to know about it.

As for the last cake, I got nothin'. Also got a particularly boring WV: qrfur. "This cake is the qrfur all ills! Honest!" Well, it's something.

anyway, that heaping pile of poo reminded me of that night i gave my dog a steak bone. things were runny like that icing THAT night too. and approximately the same color.

though, did you notice the little opening in the icing at the bottom? Going off of the assumption that this is a "bee hive" they were very realistic in providing the bees a place to enter...? AWESOME :)

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What's a Wreck?

What's a Wreck?

A Cake Wreck is any cake that is unintentionally sad, silly, creepy, inappropriate - you name it. A Wreck is not necessarily a poorly-made cake; it's simply one I find funny, for any of a number of reasons. Anyone who has ever smeared frosting on a baked good has made a Wreck at one time or another, so I'm not here to vilify decorators: Cake Wrecks is just about finding the funny in unexpected, sugar-filled places.

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